


Up The Wall

by bugsuit



Series: 100 Prompts - Archer [8]
Category: Archer (Cartoon)
Genre: Car Accidents, Driving, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 16:50:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6058756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bugsuit/pseuds/bugsuit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything goes wrong on car chases - that's kind of a given. Archer and Cyril get some awkward bonding done while waiting for an extraction. (8. Action: character must drive a car)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Up The Wall

“Take the wheel!”

“What are you doing?”

“Is it not obvious what I’m doing? _Take the wheel, Lana!”_

Too busy clambering over the seats to check if he was being heeded, Archer cocked his gun and elbowed the pile of metal suitcases out of the way. He fired off a shot that shattered the remaining glass in the back window, and one of the cars tailing them veered off the road and crunched into a ditch.

“Do you see how easy that was when you don’t _gush bullets_ like a shitty neighbour with a power washer?”

“Don’t antagonise her!” Cyril yelled from the back seat, his knees digging into the seat cushion as he tried to steady himself enough to fire off a shot of his own. It pinged off the hood of one of the remaining cars, all of them black and shiny and identical like a horde of angry beetles. “I can’t get a clear shot! Hold her steady!”

“It’s not a god damn pirate ship, Cyril! I’m doing the best I can!”

“Dweeb,” Archer remarked incredulously, grabbing one of Lana’s clips from the back footwell and passing it back to her. “Total dweeb. Seriously, how did he ever get ramped up to James Bond tier from _desk job?”_

Lana gave Archer a rough shove in the small of the back, shunting him face-first into the back seat and buying herself some space to climb across to the driver’s side. Her hands were white-knuckled on the wheel, and when she glanced out of the window, they tightened even more. “Hold onto something! They’re going to ram us!”

Archer twisted his face out of the synthetic leather and sprawled sideways against the suitcases. “I swear to God, if you all had some secret meeting about stopping the phrasing thing without telling me-“

The car lurched to one side with a resounding crash and the car screeched its side along the metal rail that lined the road. For a moment Archer saw black.

His vision returned slowly, in spots of colour that didn’t really fit with the dull greens and browns of the landscape – and then he got a face full of Cyril Figgis, sporting a pained expression and holding one hand delicately to his head. Archer winced in pain and clung to the seat.

“Oh,” he grated out, “ _shit._ _Ow!_ God damn it, Cyril!”

“Ow. Ow. Okay. Am I bleeding?” Cyril forced one eye open and realised he was looking down the barrel of Archer’s Walther PPK. He flinched backwards in shock, throwing both hands up in the air. “Oh, my God! _Sorry!_ How was that _my_ fault?”

Archer rolled his eyes and batted Cyril’s head out of the way with the butt of his gun, and immediately fired it out of the window behind him.

The ex-accountant yelled wordlessly and slammed his hands over his ears. In front of him, Archer was mouthing something that was too muffled to hear but – Cyril would _bet –_ it was some bullshitted apology and an accompanying fact about tinnitus.

Lana, meanwhile, was having even less of a good time. She pushed herself back in her seat, steering with her knees while she reloaded one of her guns, and then returned one hand to the wheel while the other _un_ loaded the gun straight out of the window at the car that had just slammed into them.

What she _really didn’t need right now_ was Archer and Cyril nettling each other in the back seat. Things couldn’t really get any-

_Thwip._

**_“Augh!”_ **

_“Lana!”_

“Lana! _Cyril, move,”_ Archer scolded, shoving Cyril out of the way and beating him to the space between the front seats. Which, he now realised, was sporting an unpleasant little spatter of blood. “Lana!”

“Ow,” Lana groaned, setting her teeth and hissing as she forced herself to keep her good arm occupied with the steering wheel. “Archer-!” He wasn’t looking at her, she realised, so she waited until he was done emptying his gun into the other car. When he turned back to check on her, like she knew he would, she grunted pointedly and wedged herself towards the corner and out of the way of the wheel. “Take the wheel. I’m gonna pass out.” Her voice was slurred.

“Lana! Don’t pass-“ His brow furrowed disapprovingly as she did exactly what he’d been about to forbid her from doing. _Probably out of spite,_ he decided, and shifted his knees so that he could lean over her and grab the wheel before they veered off the road. _Or more probably because they shot you. In… I hope not your collarbone, but, maybe. There’s a lot of blood there._ “Cyril, take her guns – you can be the new Spray ‘N’ Pray while I get us the hell out of dodge.”

“I can aim, Archer!”

“So tell it to the goddamn cartel! Or, you know – _shoot them!”_

Archer swerved, narrowly pulling their shitty rented car out of the way of their enemies’ next attempt at ramming into them, and heard a distinct yell from the back seat accompanied by a flurry of bullets. Glass shattered. Someone, hopefully the driver, gave a cry of pain.

“Archer, we’re slowing down!” Cyril called, scrabbling around for another clip.

“Gee, Cyril, maybe that’s because Lana is in no fit state to operate the vehicle and I can’t take over because I’m _pinned to the back seat by your stupid knee!”_

Cursing, Cyril forced himself closer to the window, rearranging himself so he had room to pull his leg away. Immediately, Archer scrambled forwards and wedged his feet into the gap, slamming the pedal down and realising too late that Lana’s foot was still in the way.

“Sorry, Lana! You’ll probably feel that when you wake up!” He wrenched on the wheel and the car veered sharply and then smashed through the safety railing and off the road. The bumper hit a rock and jogged the front end of the car into the air for a stomach-lurching moment. “Augh! _Sorry, Lana!_ Cyril, buckle in!”

“Archer, what are you doing!? Get back on the road!”

“No, Cyril, there’s a disproportionate number of people who want to kill us on the road! God damn it, _buckle in!_ What are you, eight?”

“You’re going to kill us!”

Archer braced one hand against the car door, effectively strapping Lana’s unconscious body to the seat, and wrenched on the wheel again. “Sorry, Lana! Cyril, I’m not sorry at al- _oh, **shit!”**_

For a moment after the right wheel hit a boulder, there was only a wide, blank view of the open sky. A moment later, both of the car’s conscious occupants felt their stomachs ride a horrid, vomit-inducing lurch upwards as the front of the car rode gravity straight down.

The hillside was steep, and of _course_ there were sharp rocks all over the place. That was just part of the appeal of visiting a national park. It was comforting to know that trying to navigate over these wouldn’t be Archer’s problem, because the car had flipped off its wheels to save him the trouble.

The roof hit the rocky ground with a deafening crunch, and it seemed being awake for the rest of the route down wouldn’t be an issue either.

 

* * *

 

 

It was dark.

That was pretty much the only piece of information Cyril could process for a good minute or so, too preoccupied with crawling his sorry way back to consciousness to deal with anything else.

But as he lay there, eyes just barely cracked open to a view of a clear night sky, his other senses slowly began to wake up along with the rest of him. He was warm, which was at least good for the time being since he was pretty sure that was coming from a fire nearby and _not_ a brain injury, or perhaps… being dead. He was in a fair amount of pain, though, and his forehead was wet. Those two things were definitely bad.

There were also rocks digging into his back, and that was a double-edged sword right there, because it meant he was no longer in the car – and _that_ either meant he’d been thrown out of it or _dragged_ out of it.

“Nghh-herrgh,” he said experimentally.

“Oh, good,” said Archer, “you’ve finally decided to join the party. That is… being awake in a shitty desert.”

Cyril stifled another groan, knowing that responding would only encourage him, and tried to force his right arm under himself to wedge himself upright. His left arm was currently MIA. He’d deal with that in a minute or two.

“…Lana,” he slurred. “Where’s…?”

“Unconscious, but otherwise totally fine, no thanks to you.” Cyril managed to focus on the silhouette that was crouched by the edge of the small fire, and it turned to give him a condescending look. “Pass me some more firewood. There’s a pile next to your stump – sorry, I mean your _totally intact leg.”_

“What-!?” Cyril jerked fully awake, sucking in a horrified breath, and his eyes fixed suddenly on his legs. Which were… both fine. He frowned up at the silhouette. “Screw you, Archer.”

Archer wheezed out a half-hearted burst of laughter and flopped back onto his ass among the desert rocks, holding out his hand expectantly and waiting for Cyril to fill it with a handful of dry twigs. These he arranged carefully on the fire and then dusted his hand on his pants.

Cyril left him to fuss over the fire and traced the surroundings of their makeshift campsite with a long, cursory stare. The car lay in a crumpled mess a little way off, left where it had landed at the bottom of the hill. The light of Archer’s fire illuminated a couple of large boulders, one of which Cyril was slumped against, and the other… Lana.

She was lying perfectly still. It was a little blurry, because he’d lost his glasses somewhere, but he hoped her chest really was moving and it wasn’t just the flickering shadow cast by the fire. Someone – Archer – had put her into a recovery position and tied part of a ripped shirt around her upper arm.

Cyril absently reached up to his own forehead, and he was mildly surprised to find that Archer had extended the same treatment to him.

“Don’t poke at it, Cyril. That’s like, injury 101.”

“I _wasn’t,”_ he deadpanned automatically, shooting Archer a disdainful look, and Cyril let his hand drop. He reclined back against the rock, shifting slightly to try and find a less uncomfortable angle. “Is Lana okay?”

Archer followed his gaze to the silent shape arranged by the opposite boulder. “She’s unconscious, you idiot, that happens sometimes when you’re a giant pussy who gets shot clean through the arm and then smacks their pussy head on a car roof.” He prodded sulkily at the fire. “She’s fine though. And she’ll probably be more fine when the rescue chopper gets here. My shirt, on the other hand, is decidedly not fine, so you can both pitch in to buy me a new one when we get out of Big Bend National Nowheresville – in which there are not a lot of splint materials, so…” He shrugged. “Maybe don’t move your arm.”

“My what? _Ow!”_ Cyril glanced down to inspect his left arm, which was – okay, no, not inspecting that any closer, because that wasn’t a great angle for an arm to be in. “Oh, my God,” he moaned unhappily.

“Yeah, no shit,” said Archer cheerfully, wandering over shin-high weeds to slide down the rock beside him. “It’s pretty broken. I told you not to move it, you idiot.”

“What is that?” Cyril made a clumsy grab at the flask Archer was drinking from, and hurriedly jammed it against his lips.

“Hey! No! Don’t drink that, it’s…” Archer trailed off automatically, scowling at the finger being held up at him. “Cyril.” He was still drinking. “Cyril, God damn it, that’s vodka!”

When the flask was snatched back, Cyril took a gasp of the clear night air and fought to keep from smirking. “I know,” he said breathlessly. “It’s never water with you.”

“Ass,” Archer hissed, shaking the flask experimentally and sighing at the minimal amount of liquid that sloshed inside it. “That’s not even enough for me to get drunk on. You, on the other hand, get to be tipsy, so screw you especially hard for ruining an already-ruined day. Night. Whatever,” he finished bitterly, tipping the flask back and draining the rest of it in one shot.

For a long time, neither man said anything. The fire crackled and spat bits of charred bushes at them.

Cyril opened his mouth.

“Yes, Lana’s fine. If you ask me again I will put you back in the smoking wreckage with the suitcases of bearer bonds and you can just stay there until a coyote eats you.”

Cyril closed his mouth, frowned indignantly at him, and tried again. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

“What were you going to say? Something stupid?”

“No. Actually, yes. So never mind.”

Archer snickered, his eyes suddenly bright with amusement. “Wait. Were you going to thank me?”

“No.”

“You’re the biggest loser, Cyril. The _biggest._ And loser-iest.”

“Not a word,” Cyril scolded. “But yes, fine, I was at least going to say you did a good job kamikazeing us into a valley in the middle of nowhere.”

“Kamikazeing isn’t a word either.” Archer raised his flask, remembered it was empty, and threw it scornfully aside. “And you’re very welcome for me saving all of our lives. Again. Which I do every time our lives are endangered.”

“By you,” Cyril added.

“By me.” Archer patted dirt off his pants distractedly and leaned back against the rock. “But I do _un_ -danger our lives in a more or less equal ratio to _en_ dangering them. Just pointing that out.”

“Yeah.” Cyril huffed out an uncomfortable sigh, lifting his head to stare up at the rising smoke, and forced out what he’d been going to say in the first place. “Does she ever talk about me…?”

It had come out weak, because he already knew it was a pretty pathetic thing to ask, and Cyril was already preparing himself to be ignored or punched or for some other Archer-esque response.

What he didn’t expect was a straight answer.

Archer thought about it – not because he had to think very hard, but because he wasn’t sure if Cyril really wanted the answer. And then he shrugged, and wished silently that he’d brought more alcohol. “Sometimes she talks about you being clingy. What do you want me to say, Cyril?”

Cyril said nothing. His eyes dropped to his lap and he fussed vacantly with a tear in his pant leg.

Archer sighed.

“Cyril, I’m well aware I’m the last person you want to hear this from, but if I didn’t tell you you need to get over it I’d be lying by omission.” He shook his head. “So… you need to get over it. Us. Me and Lana.”

“Shut the hell up, Archer,” Cyril forced out.

Archer shrugged nonchalantly. “Well, it’s your abandonment complex,” he said simply, and went silent again.

It was another excruciatingly quiet five minutes before Cyril spoke again, but at least after that long he’d cooled his head a little.

“I’m working on it,” he mumbled uncertainly.

“And that’s the first step.” Archer lifted his hand to pat him on the shoulder, thought better of it when he noticed the angle the rest of his arm was at, and patted his knee instead. “In the meantime, you get to get sloshed at bars all over the world and bang anything that moves. It’s the perks of being a secret agent, Cyril. You get access to all the coping methods you could ever want.”

“Booze and sex.”

“Hey,” Archer retorted, “booze and sex are the Band-Aids of the soul. And you’re not Krieger, so, at least you _have_ one.”

Cyril made an unhappy noise and sank a little further down against the boulder, looking away. “I just…”

“Don’t,” Archer interrupted, “say you miss her. I am currently with her and therefore it _will_ be weird. I’m only giving you closure suggestions because the faster you get over it, the faster I can fully enjoy pounding her into the kitchen drawers while I make stir-fry with the hand not bracing my animal-like frenzy against the fridge.”

Cyril groaned in an upset, sobbing kind of way and Archer patted his knee again consolingly.

“There, there, Figgis. At least all of our other coworkers are gonna die alone, so, you can all do that together. Hey, make a night of it, maybe go out with a bang. I know Cheryl still wants a chokey piece of it.” A pause. “Also, Pam, and probably Ray. So, co-worker orgy ticked off the bucket list.”

“I hate you.”

“Me too. I mean, I hate you, too. If I hated myself I’d be in a relationship with an accountant and not a hot secret agent with ginormous tits.”

“I hate you _so,_ so much.”

**Author's Note:**

> tfw you don't proofread ever. sorry folks :^0
> 
> i keep telling myself i'll write The Proper Full Smut soon but then i get distracted with ocelots and campfires and stuff. someone force me into it, quick.
> 
> that does remind me though, if any of you guys have any bright suggestions for what you'd want to see for a certain prompt, do let me know! the full list is [here,](http://smalldeer.dreamwidth.org/16746.html) as always.


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